Re: "That's when he drank the Kool-Aid"

: : : : From a Law and Order episode.
: : : : A friend of the defendant describing how his buddy crossed the line into extreme religious zeal.

: : : Good one.

: : It is a good one, and I've been hearing it in other (quasi-religious) contexts. People who fervently buy into the rah-rah Wal-Mart Way, or some pyramid scheme like Amway. They could also be classified as religions, I suppose, if you want to see it that way....

: There is a nationally syndicated talk-radio commentator who in the past has urged Senator John McCain to "lay off the Kool-Aid" when the Senator has taken a position that coincides with the Democrats' position on one matter or another.

There may be readers of this page who aren't familiar with the Kool-Aid allusion. Should we let them in on it? Okay, I will. In the 1970s, a failed monkey salesman named Jim Jones found fame and fortune in San Francisco by founding The People's Temple, a more or less common garden variety of cult. In 1978 he persuaded 1,100 members to go with him to Guyana, where the government had given him 300 acres for his new version of The People's Temple. In November he apparently felt trapped by the threat of exposure for the fraud that he was, and for that reason or some other, persuaded 900 members of the cult, including men, women and coerced children, to die by ceremoniously drinking grape Kool-Aid that they knew to be poisoned. Kool-Aid is an American product consisting of powdered fruit flavoring and sugar in an envelope, which when mixed with water makes a drinkable beverage. As it happens, the product used by Jim Jones was FlavorAid, a rival of Kool-Aid. SS